Driving to the grocery store late this afternoon, I heard Nicole Wallace interview a filmmaker/documentarian about the life of German American Veteran, Guy Stern, who died at the age of 101. During the interview, the filmmaker referenced a quote from Thomas Jefferson alluding to the fact that men live under whatever injustice/hardship they are willing to suffer. His interpretation of that idea was that for most of human history, humans have lived as subjects under the rule of some authority – a king, a lord, a master, or some other form of tyrant (from the Greek Tyrannus).
It was for those who found living as subjects intolerable to rise up against such rule – Rob Roy, William Wallce, the French peasantry, the Colonial Americans, and many others. Every rebellion resulted in some change in the governance structure – often replacing one form of tyranny with another. Alas! But now and again, there was actual transformation. It was like that in France and later in the US. In America, the highest office established was that of Citizen – not king or Prime Minister or President.
And that brings us to where we are today – with one political party hellbent on establishing a tyranny based on bigotry, misogyny, and zealotry. I sometimes think that the SCOTUS wants to uproot every right and precedent that protects the rights of individual citizens in order to goad them into supporting a Constitutional Convention that the zealots and bigots (and their billionaire patrons) can then coopt in order to make our country a fascist state that serves the likes of Trump, Musk, and other special people.
We will find such a state insufferable, I think, and we should start behaving that way now rather than only after it has become a Fait Accompli.
Interesting that in the short time of our country and mankind in general, common themes repeat, and people seem surprised as if it is new.